Heretofore, there has been employed a surface-mount inductor in which an external electrode is formed on a chip-like element body by using an electrically-conductive paste. For example, JP 2005-116708A discloses a method which comprises: applying an electrically-conductive paste on a surface of a resin-molded chip encapsulating a winding wire; then curing the electrically-conductive paste to form an underlying electrode; and further subjecting the underlying electrode to plating to form an external electrode.